Category Livio Di Matteo
Another Portent of a Looming Federal Election
It turns out that that Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver is reported as saying that “the government can shrink the national debt by growing the economy and ‘without actually paying off any debt’.” At the same time, as part of pre–budgetary consultations with the finance committee, the Conference Board of Canada, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation […]
Burney’s Brave New Canada
I had the opportunity to hear Derek Burney speak yesterday. Mr. Burney is originally from Thunder Bay (Fort William to be precise) and went on to a distinguished public service career as a diplomat as well as chief of staff to Prime Minister Mulroney, president and CEO of CAE Inc, chairman and CEO of Bell […]
Tax Competition
The Tax Foundation released its 2014 International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) of 34 OECD countries and Canada’s overall rank was 24 out of 34 countries. Despite our recent snagging of Burger King, we are apparently in the bottom third of OECD countries when it comes to tax competitiveness. Interestingly enough, the United States did even […]
Is Modern Macro Useful?
Well, I had a quick read through Kartik B. Athreya’s Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Non-Technical View because I have not been near macro theory since I finished grad school nearly 25 years ago. It seemed like a good way to re-acquaint myself with the subject and get some insight on what some of the […]
Why the Roman Empire Really Fell
Research Memorandum From: Office of Historical Research Studies, Time Travel Division, Open University of the Inner Solar System, September 3, 2476 To: Board of Solar Regents, Open University of the Inner Solar System On the bi-millennium of the official fall of the Roman Empire as dated by the overthrow of Romulus, the last of the […]
Balancing the Premiers
Apparently, ten out of ten premiers (13 out of 13 if we count the territories) can agree that Canada is suffering from a “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and the provinces. At their annual meetings, which are wrapping up in Charlottetown today, the provincial premiers are arguing that since the Federal budget is moving into surplus […]
Physicians and Workload: A Very Simple International Comparison
The Canadian Medical Association has been having its annual meetings this week in Ottawa and in honor of the event, let me put out another international comparison on physicians using data from the OECD Health Statistics 2013. The first chart (Figure 1) is a basic resource availability measure showing the number of physicians per 1000 […]
Stewardship and Autonomy
Ontario last week announced the signing of Strategic Mandate Agreements with each of its 44 universities and colleges as part of a move to “drive system-wide objectives articulated by the Ministry’s Differentiation Policy Framework.” Essentially, in a restrained fiscal environment the provincial government prefers to target money for new programs only where they can be […]
A New Policy Think Tank
Well, there is a new policy think tank in Canada and they have just released a commentary on the minimum wage.
We Are Not Slower, Just More Erratic: Comparing Growth in Canada and the United States
The existence of a productivity gap between Canada and the United States should ultimately manifest itself in terms of the growth rate of real per capita GDP. If productivity growth in Canada is consistently below that of the United States, then our real per capita GDP should also not grow as quickly as the United […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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